"Forget About Siri and Alexa — When It Comes to Voice Identification, the 'NSA Reigns Supreme'". Here's a grim article about the immense power and reach of the NSA to recognize you, solely by voice. They've had this tech since at least 2006. I wasn't aware I had a "voiceprint" which could be used to "connect individuals to their past utterances, even when they had used unknown phone numbers, secret code words, or multiple languages."

Have some near-future Black Mirror-esque fiction-maybe-not-fiction about a world where contractors can sell their sleep time to other, richer dreamers so that they can have more dream time. Plausible? Probably not (at least I hope not). Interesting, dark, fiction? Yes.

This is nothing new to most of us who've been reading (or cyberpunk paranoia-ing) for a while, but it's a fantastic recap of just how the big algorithm companies manage to control discourse and divert attention--and just how difficult of a problem it is to know anything when everyone can tell you everything.

When I was really on this whole "let's get really rich" idea it was mostly to make sure that me and mine could escape to a bunker, deserted island, or Atlas Shrugged-style-paradise-dome-hidden-from-the-world and fuck off for the rest of our miserable lives in the case of nuclear war or complete and total breakdown of humanity. Since then, I've become fairly more in touch with my inevitable death (sooner or later, right? BTW, I turn 27 in August--wish me luck), and a more likely role in trying to rebuild civilization, but this time with radiation. And maybe we'll eat the rich? (Oh shit. What if that Black Mirror episode about the evil robot murder dogs actually had the rich deploying the evil robot murder dogs? That would be no good.)

Oh man! Do you hate Facebook? I do, despite the fact that I use it constantly. I know it drains my battery (well, before I deleted the app from my phone--the mobile app works fine), surveils all of my information, gathers psychometrics data about me, and performs social sentiment experiments on me, but hey--I gotta stay in touch with all my friends and business opportunities, right? Fascinatingly, despite Facebook being a massive organism, somehow I'm not the parasite in the relationship. Is there a term for huge monstrous organisms that leech the life out of smaller, less empowered ones? Anyways, here's a big list of tons of awful things that Facebook has done to exploit people. (Unrelated: here's a video of a guy rapping about giving his cat a bath.)

Do you remember that "Open Letter to Yelp CEO" letter by Talia Jane two years ago? (Holy shit, has it already been two years?) Turns out that it more or less ruined her life--further evidence that no good deed goes unpunished. Meanwhile, a woman who ripped her apart for being an "entitled millennial" made her entire career from that article. Oooh, you'll see, older generations who are also shitty! (This is to acknowledge the cool olds. Thank you.) The point at the end, though, is that her article actually ended up having positive benefits at Yelp--increasing minimum wage, giving paid vacations, and increasing PTO days. That's great. Also, if you have an opportunity for Talia, you should email her.

Way's Notes

Hi there!

First order of business: remember that accidental Hawaii missile launch alert from last week? Turns out, it was so much worse than I even imagined. What a horrible UI. Anyhow!

Second order of business: I'd like to talk about softness. More recently I've been getting in touch with the emotional self. Emotionality, intuition, sensitivity, compassion, kindness. Call it intentional deprogramming of gender paradigms and hegemonic masculinity if you like, but I've encountered it through far more mundane things: friendships, self-reflection, a skepticism of authority. And most importantly, I'm beginning to understand its essential role in the preservation of humanity as we know it.

Let's talk about the Walking Dead. (I know, weird detour, but bear with me.) In that show, which is a post-apocalyptic world full of zombies, Rick and Lori have to decide whether or not they have a child. Our current child-having situation is kind of like that, too, except instead of zombies it's climate change and overpopulation. But the fundamental argument is: to have a child is to believe in the future, to have faith in life, to believe that the ultimate soft thing, an infant, deserves to spring forth in the harshest of conditions.

'Cause you see, if there's anything I am, it's pragmatic. If you need budgeting help, I'm your guy. If you need me to explain why you should (or shouldn't) make a major life decision, I'm the dude. If you need to be calmed down and walked away from a logistical cliff, I'm a man.

But let's talk about Dina. Dina has organized the fu:bar Glitch Art Festival for the last two years, along with her bo, Vedran. They live in Croatia. I was there last October, and Dina, Vedran, two other friends, and myself found ourselves at a bar where we were crowded into three chairs, sharing seats and talking and joking. As Dina was talking to my other friends (hi Brittany and Bastien!) across from her, with myself in the middle, she leaned forward and rested her arms on my knees as she talked. Now, I'm American, so casual physical touch and warmth is extremely surprising. I found it so incredibly pleasant, in what it was: simply an expression of affection, unimportant and insignificant yet lovely and friendship-affirming.

Today, I held hands with nine people and stared into their eyes in order to intentionally bridge the gap between people in a very emotionally challenging piece of theatre I'm working on. It was lovely. In fact, these sorts of interactions are interactions I've been searching for a lot of my life: I adore the people in my lives who are touchy and affectionate, because I find myself touch-deprived, clinical, hard, people-afraid, protectively-and-respectfully distant. These things line up well with a lifestyle where I live, rich, in a bunker with armed guards and just my closest friends. But holding and touching, feeling deeply, living in understanding line up well with fostering communities, helping others, bolstering the whole instead of priming the sole.

I don't know. I ramble, I'm tired. I'm exploring softness. I couldn't explain it to you in whole words because I don't have enough experience to sum it up, but I tell you: it's worthwhile.

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